Scripts

Way back, around the time my son was born, I not only used to write novels and short stories but television scripts as well. My son turns 26 next month soooo, you get an idea of just how long ago that was. It was a different world then and well, television script writing isn't a wide open market like it used to be. Most series these days have a writing staff that pens their episodes- freelancing isn't nearly as easy.


Don't get me wrong- it wasn't easy 25 years ago either. I did manage to sell one script and from that, got some decent part time work over the next few years until the television series landscape changed.

Because of this, I love to collect scripts. I have boxes of them from favorite shows as well as from series I worked on. Pilot scripts and the even rarer series "bibles" were a favorite of mine. I love going through these and seeing what scenes were cut or what was rearranged. In pilot scripts, if you're lucky enough to get one of the earlier drafts, you get to see the character progression from the original concept to what we see on televsion. And you often get a sense of those actors who put their own personality into that character, making him/her that much more real and deminsional.

Oh, the series I got lucky enough to sell to once upon a time? The Equalizer. In all honesty, what I sold was heavily over written and really what ended up on television was the basic overall storyline I had come up with. And a few pieces of dialog.
Bumper Sticker Wisdom: Drive like you stole something.

My choice for eye candy tonight:
Stephen Caffrey as Lieutenant Myron Goldman- this is my Ian Davidson.